1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a liquid crystal device which can be utilized, for example, as a liquid crystal optical shutter, and more particularly, to a structure of such a liquid crystal device which is constructed so as to modulate a quantity of light transmitted through or reflected from the liquid crystal device by way of controlling the level and/or timing, or frequency of an electric voltage applied to the liquid crystal device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
When an image is recorded on a photosensitive material by using a liquid crystal device, the recording has conventionally been made in a manner as shown in FIG. 1 of the accompanying drawings, as prior art. There, parallel light rays 1 are irradiated onto a liquid crystal device 10, being controlled in accordance with image signals, and the parallel light rays 1 which are in turn subjected by the liquid crystal device 10 to an on-off control or shutter control are imaged on a photosensitive material 30 through a Selfoc lens array 20 ( Selfoc lens is a trade name of a refractive index distributed lens manufactured by Nihon Itagarasu Kabushiki Kaisha in Japan ) so that an image is recorded on the photosensitive material 30. The liquid crystal device 10 employed there consists of a liquid crystal 11 filled in a space between orientation diaphragms 12A and 12B which are faced to each other with a predetermined distance such as 6.mu. therebetween. In one of the orientation diaphragms 12B, a plurality of pixel electrodes 13 of a predetermined size and made from a transparent material are embedded with predetermined distances therebetween, which form picture elements of the liquid crystal device 10 under a predetermined arrangement, while to the another orientation diaphragm 12A there are embedded a plurality of photomasks 17 for shading at locations anti correlated to the pixel electrodes 13. There are provided outside of the diaphragm 12A and in a layer a common electrode 14 which is formed with a transparent material. To the outside of the common electrode 14, there is provided a transparent base plate 15A made from glass and likewise, to the outside of the diaphragm 12B, there is provided a transparent base plate 15B. To the outsides of the transparent base plates 15A and 15B, there are provided respectively in a layer a polarizing plate 16A and a polarizing plate 16B. With reference to FIG. 1, it shall be noted that the parallel light rays 1 are shown there with extremely large incident angles so as to indicate that the rays 1 are not strictly parallel to each other.
As explained above, when the parallel light rays 1 are subjected to shutter control by the liquid crystal device 10 and are recorded on the photosensitive material 30 and images are formed by each picture element, the parallel light rays 1, which should have been made parallel to each other, are not so in a strict sense. Therefore, unless the rays emitted from the liquid crystal device 10 are converged by the Selfoc lens array 20 as an image formation means, they are diffused too widely to have a good resolution on the photosensitive material 30. In order to avoid such wide diffusion, the recording has been made commonly by interposing the Selfoc lens array 20 and the like between the liquid crystal array 10 and the photosensitive material 30. However, such interposition makes an optical system bulky and makes its optical utilization efficiencies poor.